"name calling such as "deniers", "monbiots" (yes, I did actually see that used as a more-than-slightly disparaging adjective recently) does not help anyone."

Do you think your repeating the lie that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet helps encourage informed debate? Admittedly, it helps us here by making it clear you can't be trusted to be factually accurate.

Pansapiens: been watching Monty Python then? What have the Romans ever done for us? "All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

I agree with newshoundCO in that Al Gore making An Inconvenient Truth is one of the worst things that could have happened to informed debate about Climate Change. It's taken what should be a neutral issue in which everyone has a vested interest and turned it into a political football. Fundamentalists berating deniers, what a great starting place for a discussion. Those who point out that Hadleigh scientists manipulated data before publication, that the has IPCC knowingly published incorrect data on several occassions, and that one of the best known climate campaigners is a documented liar (remind me, just who invented the Internet again?), are routinely criticised for being "climate change deniers". Most of us are not: we want an informed debate where we can trust published data, and until the "climate change fundamentalists" unreservedly criticise such falsifications, there can never be such a debate. Some people do hold the position that climate change is not an area for major concern; they are entitled to their view without personal abuse, provided they are open to debate; similarly those who view it as a global crisis requiring immediate action must be prepared to debate their position rather than falling back on calling others "flat-earthers", as has been done on here. For the rest of us, it is neither denying nor accepting a position to simply request the position be based on evidence that can be trusted, and to then want an informed debate.

Froy" - "Get real: the world is warming at alarming speed. We better do something about it while we can" - exactly what do you propose?
There are clearly choices: if one accepts that the emission of greenhouse gases ought to be reduced, which clearly has to be a global effort, then that raises as many questions as it answers. For example, say the goal is to reduce methane emissions: there is one very quick way to effect a significant change - but the planet's cows might object. Alternatively, say we wish to reduce carbon dioxide emissions: one of the quickest ways to do this is to reduce emissions from power generation. To provide suitable baseload power to enable gas, oil and coal stations to be taken out of service, we either need a way to transmit power efficiently from one region of the world to another, with absolute guarantee of supply free from political interference, or we each need sufficient baseload capacity in our own country. For some places, that means large geothermal or hydro power stations; for others, it means nuclear. "Environmental" campaigners cannot have it both ways: if reducing greenhouse gases means more nuclear generation, so be it. If nuclear is to be avoided, then the increase in greenhouse gas emissions may well be slowed, but it won't be reversed. To suggest that wind / wave / solar power provides suitable baseload worldwide is as credible as suggesting that no-one in the world will object to having a wind turbine in their yard / street / vista. The modern nuclear designs remove most of the safety concerns and possibly more importantly there are several that actually allow current waste and also decommissioned weapons stockpiles to be turned to power: swords to ploughshares isn't a bad aim to have, I hope people agree?

The point I'm trying to make - and sorry this is so long!! - is that informed debate needs to be the starting point, with nothing off the table: name calling such as "deniers", "monbiots" (yes, I did actually see that used as a more-than-slightly disparaging adjective recently) does not help anyone.

@ cylam - I wonder why they talk about deviation... oh that's right because the average temperature of the planet is 55 degrees farenheit (13 celsius). That would make for a less alarming figure. That's why they go into deviations.

So here too, DEVIATION as you point out is also a tool to hide information.

Why not just refer to the temperature unless you want to hide the data.

I don't think many people would bat an eyelash at the world being half a degree warmer, easily attributed to short or long term variation. But it's hipper to just show maps painted in bright RED to scare people over an "anomaly" (whoa there big word, sorry got a mild headache and got dizzy over that one, but I'm coming back). Why paint the map RED over a .5 anomaly on a 55 degree globe.

All of these are just tools. No warmer will ever tell you the average temperature of the planet (whatever that means because it can't be calculated perfectly enough to do comparisons from year to year - really)...but they don't use it because it's not that alarming. it's scarier to run around with maps drenched in red ink and to talk about deviation.

But hey don't mind me, go back to the altar of global warming and pray for deliverance.

pansapiens just made me realise why StraightNoChaser's post is most recommended.

Those who accept that the earth is warming recommend his post because they appreciate his irony, and many of those who don't believe the world is warming up recommend the post because they fail to see the irony.

StraightNoChaser wrote: "Who believes in all this "science", "resesarch", and "measurement" about man made global warming anyway."

-Yeah, it's not like science, research and measurement have provided us with anything good in the past. Well, apart from machines (industrialisation), fertilisers and pesticides (the agricultural revolution), electricity, fast transportation , information technology, communications, medicines and health care, etc. etc.. We would be so much better of ignoring "science" and becomming primitive hunter-gatherers once more.

- There some people on here who don't need know what a deviation means from a data sample. That's sad. Something you should have learned in high school math even in the US.
- If you really argue that the earth is not getting warming because we still have winter/cold weather or there was a cool summer where you live, you are just flat out ignorant.
- The earth is warming. Of that there is little doubt and contrary to popular opinion it is generally not a good thing because has a fairly narrow temperature range in which you can successfully grow crops/livestock to support civilization in large number in urban dwelling and not a hunter-gather society. The question is just how fast this change will occur and to what degree man-made greenhouse gases and other activities are playing. Those are the two legitimate questions in the development and it is especially difficult to answer the first one to due to the numerous inputs and sinks of the global carbon cycle.

Yes, Plimer is critical of climate change, but he is also simply wrong.

He is not an expert on climate change and he has reason to be biased. He has financial interests in the mining industry and a price on carbon would hurt him financially. Did you see the discussion between Plimer and Monbiot on the ABC last March? See http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/15/2772906.htm. That discussion clearly shows Plimer has no leg to stand on.

And the fact that it is cool here in east Australia brings the average world temperature down a little bit, but clearly doesn't mean it can't be the warmest year on record worldwide. And Perth is hot at the moment.

It seems that more and more Rich countries are joining the US for not living up to their historic C02 emission. Now the Japs have been vociferous in their opposition to Cancun extension of the Kyoto Protocol in the absence of a new treaty. The rest of the developing countries have to live with only the Vanuatu diplomatic outburst of "Climate Genocide" in Copenhagen.

The benchmark data set 1960-1990 is really only a very small sample of climate data. Climate has always varied. Where I sit today in Australia writing this we are having a very cool summer. Professor Plimer in his book "Climate Change: the missing science" is very critical of the IPCC and its use of data. Further, climate change is a necessary but not sufficient condition to show human induced climate change.

I studied Climatology and was a graduate student working toward a PhD in the 1990s and this is as true then as it is true now. While thermometers and government have only been tracking temperatures in recent history you can still glean a VERY accurate depiction of the earth’s climate through variety of scientific means. Our team worked with ice core and went around the world to gather ice cores from a variety of latitudes - Antarctica, Greenland, China, Peru and Kilimanjaro. The ice core I personally worked on was 120,000 years and you can paint an accurate picture of the climate at that time through studying the isotopes, dust etc.

It's true that the earth's climate shift with time, for example, when the Viking first settled Greenland, it was during a warm epoch. No scientist is discounting this fact. What is happening is that with the amount of junk we have put into our atmosphere it is just exacerbating this cycle and making it produce more extreme weather patterns. Some places will be colder and some will be hotter, some will be wetter and other’s drier. Keep in mind that the last ice age was only a difference of just 3 degrees from the earth’s current temperature.

I wish Al Gore had never made an inconvenient truth because I think this turned the issue of Climatic Change into a political issue needlessly. The environment never used to be a political issue - Teddy Roosevelt – a staunch Republican mind you – was the first president to enact the National Park legislation. Don’t we all care about our earth? Don’t people want to be able hunt ski and fish in the future?

You would think that this news would keep people from posting silliness like "It's not warming because it's very cold here now", or "some obscure club for influential non-scientists is talking about cooling"... Quod non. Some people are hard to convince, even with facts.

Anyone who now STILL denies the world is warming is not a skeptic but a clear denialist.

10 years ago German alarmist-scientists told the public that we will have to get used to "mild winters" starting this decade. Problem is the last two winters have been exceptionally harsh and only today I was searching for my car which was buried below several feet of Man-Made Global Warming™ (the technical term for snow). Now they are telling us that very hot summers will be accompanied by very cold winters.

Yeah, I'm no climate scientist and therefore can't judge this field, I'm just curious why scientist constantly have to tweak their models around a reality that refuses to play along.

It's not an acceptable argument to say that something is right just because billions believe it. Give concrete examples or data that support why you believe it is indisputable that God created the world, and then I will consider it.

As for the rest of those who don't believe climate change is happening, the misguided crusade that people who refuse to see plain facts in front of their faces is probably the result of a lack of true understanding of what goes into the vast amount of scientific data pointed by and large to climate change. Seizing on some slight oversight in a chart that apparently you do not understand fully as evidence of a worldwide climate change cover-up does not years and years of climate data undo.

I do not claim to be an expert of climate change, because I am not a climate scientist. However, I do have enough of a grasp of the scientific method to know that when overwhelming evidence mounts to support a theory, it behooves the community to accept the conclusion best supported. Anything else is simply sticking one's head in the sand and praying it's not correct.